This has been on my to-do list for a while. I milled the log up about 1.5-2 years ago and have used the top pieces for several end tables, but I have been wanting to make a desk from one for quiet a while. It is from a tree that was being cleared for an easement near Lake Brownwood, Texas that was going to be pushed in to a ditch to be burned.
The log:
Fresh cut green, before drying:
Dried:
leveled, sanded, dovetailed and epoxied:
It is pretty cool to see that when the tree was ~7-9 years old they trimmed a bunch of lower branches that grew over. Surprisingly, for being 32" average width, I counted the tree to only be about ~30 years old. Some of its first years it put on 1" of growth per year, but an average of about 1/2" an inch per growth ring, coupled with a spurt from about 5-10 years ago where it hardly grew it all, it obviously was sitting in a nice area.
I wanted a lighter design on the base, so I didn't carry the cabinets all the way to the floor, but this meant I needed to do some accent on the legs to keep them from being so monotonous. I put a taper on them and inlaid a strip of walnut about 1/4" in on the two outside faces of each leg:
Test piece:
four legs tapered and inlaid..
The end cabinets glued up:
The drawers are hand cut dovetailed 18" full extension soft close drawers on each side. Not my best dovetails, but it has been a while since I did any by hand.
I have about 5 more slabs from this tree that I have some ideas I want to try out with.
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